Or just plain old dogs. ATT has a new program called ATT Next. It allows you to trade in an old phone every year, with no upgrade or activation fee and no money up front. Instead, you pay the cost of the phone over a 20-month period. The slyness comes in when you look at the per month cost. For an iPhone 5, you pay 27 per month. Over 20 months that adds up to . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . 540 bucks, which is just shy of the full cost of the phone without the discount you get if you re-up for a 2-year contract. Doing a new 2-year contract reduces the cost of the iPhone 5 to 200 bucks, and the activation fee is 36 bucks. So Next allows you to have a new phone yearly, and for that privilege you pay an extra 300 bucks. What a deal!

Now Sean over at FB says that it's best to buy your phone without a contract--somehow or other you pay full price for the phone, but the monthly charges for the wireless connection is less than it is under the two year contract. Adding up the difference over the course of two years, you save about 600 bucks over that period of time. I've never figured out how an unlocked phone works, though. I guess you have to arrange to get a carrier without a contract?

Now Sean over at FB says that it's best to buy your phone without a contract--somehow or other you pay full price for the phone, but the monthly charges for the wireless connection is less than it is under the two year contract. Adding up the difference over the course of two years, you save about 600 bucks over that period of time. I've never figured out how an unlocked phone works, though. I guess you have to arrange to get a carrier without a contract?

Good questions. I am ready to drop the landline so I was going call anyway. I rang my friendly neighborhood ATT 611. Thx

I knew about unlocked phones but not Sean's idea.

An unlocked phone can be used with any carrier. IOW if you bought your phone from ATT you can legally unlock it. IOW if it's out of contract/paid for. You can then use it with TMobile for example, which uses the same technology/towers as ATT. Unlocking is different from jailbreak BTW.

As far as Bring Your Own Phone I had never researched that. ATT offers BYOP prepaid (monthly) plans, as opposed to contracts which are postpaid (monthly) plans that you don't bring your own phone to, but on the postpaid they lock you into a contract with the "free" (at the time) phone. With the prepaid plan you do get a "substantial" discount on a new phone, after 2 years.

A BYOP prepaid plan, Unlimited minutes, unlimited text, and 2G data is only $60 a month. Right now I'm paying $70 for 450 minutes, 20¢ per text plan that I'm always at around $10 on, 3G data, which I don't get close to, but do go over the stock 300M a month at times so for $10 more it's worth it.

The same plan under contract would be $95. It's just a matter of coming up with the $700 ahead of time for a iPhone 5x that is coming out soon as opposed to paying more over the next two years. My buyout on my contract for 10 months is about $200. With the unlimited cell plan I can drop my landline. $10 less for all I can eat cell, + $40 less for landline. I can sell my pristine always in an OtterBox under AppleCare till June 4S for around $4-500 on ebay.

This was all at first quick check, I'll have to double check tomorrow, but it seems that BYOP is a lot cheaper than financing your phone through the carrier.

What if you've got a family plan? I'm running 3 phones on the family plan with ATT, and one of the numbers is still on the limitless data plan that ATT offered way back when the iPhone first came out. My son has that number, and he depends on that limitless data like a lifeline--I checked this month's usage and he's already at over 2 gigs, with 19 days left on the month. We have limitless text as well. The cost is over 3 times the 60 you mention, but the limitless data would add up to the difference, I think.

If ATT ever gets rid of unlimited data then it's a different story. It's strange. I signed up for the 2 gig data for my iPhone while they still had that, and I'm grandfathered into it. If I ever change, though, that option is gone.

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